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Published: August 20th 2006
Chris
Ready for the wedding on a beautiful blue sky day.When you plan a day for 16 months it is hard to know if it could meet your expectations. So many hours of plan changing, fretting over every detail, and finally realizing your instincts were right all along. We could not have dreamed that our wedding would work out so well. And fortunately most of the directional signs stayed up long enough for our guests to find their way. Our wedding took place on 8/13/06 at Scenic Beach State Park in Seabeck, WA. The wedding began with a procession to Pachabel's Canon played by Chris' Aunt Patricia (on piano) and Cousin Valerie (on violin). Corey had succeeded in avoiding me the morning of the wedding, so the first time I saw her on our wedding day was when her mother, Bonny, escorted her down the aisle.
Our friend, Paige, performed a brief ceremony and our friend Michelle added the reading from 1st Corinthians on the topic of Love. After the exchange of rings, Chris' aunt, Kathleen, sang a Cole Porter tune, So In Love. We walked down the aisle as a married couple with everyone singing: Morning has Broken.
Immediately after the wedding ceremony, we led the wedding guests (160+) down
to Scenic Beach where we continued an ancient Celtic wedding tradition. In ancient times, weddings were often held outdoors near a lake or stream. Guests tossed a small stone into the water to wish the couple good luck in their new life. Nearly everyone climbed down to the waters edge to make a wish for us with small stones that we provided.
We climbed back up to the house for a catered lunch on the grassy lawn under a giant maple tree. Chris' brother, Brendan, gave a stirring toast followed by an equally moving toast from Corey's sister, Lindsay. In the Australian tradition of wedding telegrams, we also recieved several missives from guests unable to attend the ceremony, including Chrisso in Western Australia and Shelly Randall in Nova Scotia. Shelly and Jeff are traveling across North America (sans Mexico) for an entire year, and they also have a blog on this site.
Waltzing Matilda Shelly took credit for introducing Corey to Chris and we thank her again for doing so!!
After toasts and roasts were completed we cut the cake and took more photos. Speaking of photos, if you did attend this wedding and would care to share any of your
favorite pictures feel free to email them to Chris at ccondit@gmail.com.
We received many wishes and blessings and would like to offer our readers a traditional Irish wedding blessing that we received at the end of our marriage ceremony:
May God be with you and bless you;
May you see your children's children.
May you be poor in misfortune, Rich in blessings,
May you know nothing but happiness from this day forward.
May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home
And may the hand of a friend always be near.
May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.
As we countdown to our trip the details are still being finalized, but the rough itinerary is as follows. Fly to Ireland and arrive in Dublin on September 8, 2006. Fly to Paris for a few days in early October and then fly to India on October 4. The Thailand leg of our trip will begin November 1
and continue through December 10. We will stay in Australia until the 7th of January after a few nights in Bali. Our time in New Zealand will last until early February and then our trip concludes in Guatemala from February until mid April. Our time in Guatemala will include Spanish language school and some medical volunteer practice for Corey.
We hope to update this blog every 7-10 days during our RTW trip although during our time in India and Thailand we may not have as many opportunities to upload photos and access Internet cafes. In the meantime, we invite family, friends and interested parties to click on the SUBSCRIBE icon above to add your email address to our "blog update list." You'll automatically receive an email each time we update the blog, so you'll know when to check back for new narrative and photos.
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the Walcotts
non-member comment
sniff, sniffle
What a perfect day, and what a beautiful bride! You two look, and ARE, fabulous. I'm so happy we could be there with you. And the uncontrolled sobbing during certain parts of the ceremony, as well as the best man's toast, was very cathartic for me, personally. So thank you for that. Congratulations and best wishes!